The scientific study of human evolution and culture is about a
hundred years old. This volume surveys its achievements and
methods. Originally published more than forty years ago, the
volume's contributors include people who have shaped anthropology's
future. As Gluckman says in his Preface, the contributions "point
to the horizons of increasing understanding of man, his evolution
and his social setting, as seen by a rising generation of
scholars."
The book includes chapters on how man gradually became different
from other primates--on the origin and nature of language and its
contribution to our peculiarities as human beings. It surveys the
long history of human culture and societies and the theories about
their similarities and differences; it discusses human equality and
inequality, and it considers, from the anthropologist's point of
view, economics, politics, law, religion, medicine, and the
arts.
In recent decades the various branches of
anthropology--physical, cultural, psychological, and social--have
become more specialized, and each branch is increasingly linking
itself to its appropriate cognate, biological, psychological, or
social sciences. Yet there remains a central common field to
anthropology, as the science of man, for practitioners in all its
branches. This book develops that common interest and deals with
the specific problems of various parts of the field. The book
brings out the basic nature of anthropology and the extraordinary
fascination that lies in the systematic study of the exuberant
variety of human societies and customs.
General
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